Discover Beijing
Qianmen Street and Dashilan
前门大街与大栅栏
The rebuilt imperial-era commercial boulevard running south from Tiananmen, plus the far more interesting tangle of Dashilan lanes behind it, where century-old shops for silk, tea, pickles, hats and traditional medicine still trade. Free, open late, and the best evening walk in the old city.
The story
What makes this place special
This commercial district exists because of Qing-era rules: people from outside the capital were barred from staying inside the walled city, and the gates shut at night, so travellers, merchants and theatres piled up immediately outside the Qianmen gate. The opening of Qianmen railway station in 1901 turned it into the city's transport hub. The result was a street of 'time-honoured brands', many of which still trade: Tongrentang's medicine shop dating from 1669, Yueshengzhai's roast meats from 1775, the original Quanjude roast duck restaurant of 1864, and the 19th-century silk, hat and cloth-shoe houses Ruifuxiang, Ma Juyuan and Neiliansheng - the first national flag raised over Tiananmen on 1 October 1949 was made from Ruifuxiang silk. The street was largely demolished and rebuilt before the 2008 Olympics, reopening on 7 August 2008; the 'dangdang' tram, which ran from 1921 until 1956, was reinstated as part of that work.
What you’ll discover
Qianmen Street itself is a wide, pedestrianised avenue running south from Tiananmen Square, lined with mock-period grey brick frontages that now house international chains, chain restaurants and group-tour outlets, with a short heritage tram trundling down the middle. Turn west off it into Dashilan and the scale changes: a narrow lane a few hundred metres long with the surviving old shops - the medicine hall, the shoe shop, the silk house, the hat maker - and beyond it a tangle of genuinely unreconstructed hutongs running west and south.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- The main street is a shopping mall in costume. The thing to do is walk a hundred metres down it and then turn west into Dashilan, and keep going west past the tourist end of Dashilan into the lanes beyond.
- The surviving old firms are the point and they are still real businesses: buy medicine at Tongrentang, cloth shoes at Neiliansheng, tea at Zhang Yiyuan. These are shops Beijingers use, not reconstructions.
- Skip the Qianmen Quanjude for roast duck. It is the historic branch and it is also the one every coach stops at; the duck is better and cheaper at almost any other branch or at a neighbourhood specialist.
- West of Dashilan, the Dashilar lanes - Yangmeizhu Xiejie in particular - have been quietly filled with independent design shops, bookshops and cafes in unrestored courtyards. That is where the interesting half of this district now is, and the main street funnels nobody into it.
- The tram is a short, slow novelty ride on a single straight street you can walk in fifteen minutes; it is for children and photographs.
- It is directly south of Tiananmen Square through the Zhengyangmen gate, so it is the natural place to eat and walk after a square and Forbidden City morning - but go in the evening, when the lanes behind are lit and the day-trip crowd has gone.
When to come
Late afternoon into the evening, when the frontages are lit and you can eat your way along. Weekdays; the main street is packed at weekends and in holiday weeks. Spring and autumn for walking the hutongs behind.
Getting around
Qianmen Street itself is excellent - a flat, smooth, wide pedestrian street with no traffic, benches, and lifts at the metro, so a wheelchair or a bad knee manages it easily. Dashilan is level but narrow and crowded, with a step at most shop doors. The hutongs further west are flat but have broken paving, no pavements, high courtyard thresholds and scooter traffic. The tram is boarded by steps. Overall this is one of the easier central Beijing districts for limited mobility, provided you stay on the rebuilt streets.
Worth knowing before you go
Skip the main Qianmen Street chain stores and turn west into Dashilan and Yangmeizhu Xiejie instead - that is where the old shopfronts, independent bookshops and courtyard cafes are. It is a five-minute walk from Tiananmen Square's south exit, so it works as the end of a central-axis day.
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